Mordecai Rochlin, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind in New York, succumbed to COVID-19 recently, just six weeks shy of his 108th birthday. He had been practicing law from 1937 until almost the very end. He began his career during FDR’s first term and practiced through the administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama and Trump. This is staggering and gives pause to reflect on some aspects of human longevity and on the changes that have occurred in every realm of life. One such realm, the one we peek at here, is the practice of law. Some of the changes have crept slowly down the chimney while others crashed, unannounced, through the front door. Lawyers with longevity have witnessed both subtle and radical transformation of every facet of practice.
In 1982, with four years of out-of-state practice under my belt, I returned to my native New Jersey and found employment briefly at Bendit, Weinstock, the venerable Essex County firm then known as Bendit, Weinstock and Sharbaugh. The firm was in its 25th year—not quite as old as I—and the three partners had each been a lawyer for over a quarter of a century. That seemed a colossal accomplishment.
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